“Pearl called. Lord knows how she found my cell number. I booked a flight immediately. But, God, Pipes, months! And I had no idea. And the funeral?”
A sob lodged in Piper’s throat. She covered her mouth, as her mom spread her thin arms out like a bird about to take flight. “Come here.” And Piper did, collapsing into her mother’s embrace.
Her mom stayed through the holidays, which were sad and awful, but a little less sad and awful than they might have otherwise been because at least Piper was no longer alone.
Anders continued to send letters, and sometimes a package, and Piper added them, unopened, to the stack on the kitchen table that was coming dangerously close to teetering over and spilling onto the floor.
She dodged phone calls from Jacob, the developer, deleting his messages, one after the other, until he finally stopped calling. What was the point of trying to fix up the island? What was the point of anything? Tom wasn’t here to see it.
At the end of January, four months past its first scheduled date of completion, the workers finally finished the cell tower. Tom’s cousin Steve invited everyone to a ribbon-cutting ceremony and Piper decided to go, if for no other reason than to give herself an excuse to shower and get dressed. As Steve talked about the importance of the island having decent Internet and cell phone service—being connected to the greater world—Mrs. Olecki stood scowling and Steve’s baby, who was now toddling around on her chubby legs, charmed everyone in town, even grumpy Mr. Gimby. Bobby took pictures of the whole thing with his camera and said he was going to get them developed and make a newspaper just like Anders. At the mention of his name, Mrs. Olecki scowled even harder, and everyone studiously avoided Piper’s eyes, and she found herself wishing she hadn’t come after all.
February dragged on, as February tended to do, and Piper found herself growing increasingly restless. She spent several sleepless nights tossing and turning, until finally early one morning before the sun came up, she came to a decision. She slipped out of bed, bundled up in her coat and mittens and boots, and, under the cover of darkness, snuck over to the Blue Point General Store, let herself in, and booted up the computer—which now got high-speed Internet thanks to the new cell tower. When the search engine screen popped up, she hesitated, wondering if she was doing the right thing. She could turn off the computer and go right back to her carriage house and pretend she wasn’t curious at all.
Instead, she stayed put and typed the words: “What the Frick?”
She slipped in her earbuds, clicked on the first link of the results, and then, before she could stop herself, clicked on the first episode. Anders’s voice instantly filled her ears and she sat up, drinking it in. The image of his face formed in her mind and she grinned, thinking of his funny smile, his ridiculous cowlick. She allowed herself thirty seconds of missing him, and then remembered what he’d done, how he’d lied to her, manipulated her, all for a stupid podcast. How millions of people around the country now knew her name and private details about her life—and also likely thought she was certifiably insane.
Anger ripped through her, but she continued listening anyway. And then she came back early the next morning. And the morning after that. And the morning after that. Until she finally reached the last episode.
This is Anders Caldwell. And you’re listening to What the Frick?
The now-familiar musical intro that sounded like a quirky duet between a banjo and piano filled Piper’s ears and then Anders’s voice returned.
Watermen on Frick Island get up before the sun. They don’t wear sunscreen. Or life jackets. They don’t check the weather on cell phone apps or chart their course with GPS. They don’t have to—they know the waters, the tides, by heart.
It’s backbreaking, toiling work. Decades of pollution and overfishing and the change in water temperatures in the Chesapeake Bay have made recent years difficult. Some days they only get a few crabs for their efforts. And even less money. So the question is: Why do they continue to do it?
Motivation can be a challenging thing to pinpoint. It’s often the most difficult question to tackle in reporting—the who, what, when, where, and how, those are typically the easy bits. But the why? That’s what drives a good story. It’s the question at the root of my reporting.
And criminal investigations, too, come to think of it.
Why do people do the things they do?
Why do those watermen get up day after day and put in so much effort, for so little reward?
Is it out of habit? Tradition? Sheer force of will? Insanity?
“Insanity” is an interesting word. We throw it around liberally. When food tastes amazing, it’s insane. In that usage what we’re literally saying is: It’s “crazy good.” That album or those kicks or that penthouse condo is insane. But then there’s the flip side of the word, when “insane” is not meant as a compliment. When something is crazy, in a bad way. There are a hundred synonyms, none of them any kinder: deranged, batty, mad, psychotic, cracked, nuts, unhinged, mental . . .
When I first learned that Piper Parrish thought her dead husband was alive, I thought she was insane.
Was I using the word “insane” because I thought she was literally crazy? Well, yes. But it’s more than that. We use it to describe someone whose beliefs or actions we can’t comprehend. Someone whose behavior is so far out of the realm of our life experience that it can’t be normal.
And as a journalist, when something is outside of my realm of experience, I try to understand it. I study it. I gather facts.
These are the facts. Tom Parrish woke up one morning, after a fight with his wife, and went out on a boat to try to catch crabs in the
